DU announced this week it will host the 2013 Sun Belt Conference tennis tournament. I’m assuming the contract has an out clause, because the Pioneers don’t want to still be affiliated with the Sun Belt Conference in three years.

Same story, different timeline.

DU’s intended move to a regionally friendly conference depends on its men’s basketball team. The hoopsters need to win the Sun Belt tournament and play in the NCAA Tournament to generate local excitement and prove it can be the next Gonzaga. Coach Joe Scott has done a nice job so far and winning the conference crown within the next two years isn’t a stretch.

Let’s just hope it happens before 2013. Time is running out. DU cannot continue to convert hockey to basketball at Magness Arena at $5,000-plus a pop, and it’s embarrassing to watch. The hockey team produces the revenue and the basketball program throws it away.

The Sun Belt and DU don’t belong together. The Pioneers are losing millions of bucks every year by having their nonrevenue sports compete in the southern-based loop.

If a conference switch isn’t made or in the works by 2013, DU should eliminate its cash-draining Sun Belt programs and focus on its three strengths. Men’s hockey, women’s gymnastics and men’s lacrosse are Division I staples with no affiliation to the Sun Belt. If DU must be Division I across the board to maintain those programs, the Pioneers need to settle for something regional convenient and buy a bus — and keep Magness Arena all hockey, all the time.

Flasche leaves a wrestling resume that ranked high among any of the state’s top wrestlers. He grew up in Fruita, on Colorado’s Western Slope. And in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the area was the hotbed of high school wrestling in the state.

Flasche won state high school championships in 1959 and 1960 under the direction of coach Jack Pollock.
He left the Western Slope to attend Colorado State College in Greeley, but he didn’t leave his wrestling prowess behind. While wrestling for coach Jack LaBonde at CSC, now University of Northern Colorado, Flasche continued his winning ways.

In 1962, he won the NCAA championship at 157 pounds. He also won three Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference titles.